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English Has the Scientific Edge -- For Now (axios.com)
For centuries, science was a multilingual affair, powered by French, German, English and other tongues. But since the early 1970s, English has become the undisputed lingua franca of scientific papers, conferences, and discourse. From a report: English-speaking countries now have a huge leg up in technical research, including the current rages -- artificial intelligence and quantum computing. But, while English is highly unlikely to be dethroned, its advantages are eroding due to an increasingly healthy research environment in China, the fast transmission of research papers across the internet, and AI-aided translation technology that is shrinking the language barrier. [...] The dominance of English gives native speakers a huge advantage, says Michael Gordin, a Princeton professor who specializes in the role of language in technological advance.
Because of all the liberal idiots that just LOVE illegal immigration, pretty soon English won't even be the dominant language spoken in the United States.
So currently about 80% of households speak English as their dominant language at home, as opposed to 13% of those who speak Spanish as their dominant language at home. Other than ignorance, I'm not sure how you have come to the conclusion that English won't be the dominant language in the United States for the foreseeable future.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
There is never a bad time to mock the french.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
as opposed to 13% of those who speak Spanish as their dominant language at home.
Not only that. I worked with a guy whose father immigrated to the US from Mexico in the 1950s or 1960s. He went into the Army and after he was dinged on a fitrep for his thick accent being a barrier to effective communication with other soldiers, he decided that his kids weren't going to go through that. He instituted a strict English-only policy at home and as a consequence, my co-worker (who had a very Latino name) speaks only English (and that with a Texas accent).
Not every immigrant family has an English-only policy at home, but I have interacted with enough people who grew up with that to conclude that it is not all that uncommon. Even the homes where there is not an explicit English-only policy, the kids frequently don't master their parents' native language, perhaps gaining only limited conversational ability. Face it, with television, radio, other media, their friends at school, etc. all speaking English there is usually only a very weak incentive (from the point of a child) to learn another language. Their kids, in turn, will almost certainly not speak the grandparents' native language.
What I find really interesting is the places like New York, San Antonio, Miami, etc., where there are significant ethnic populations and neighborhoods. You can typically walk around and see signage and hear people speaking where words of the immigrant community's language are interspersed among English. From what I have observed children who grow up in those sorts of neighborhoods, whether their parents are immigrants or natives, tend to develop a sort of pidgin that mixes English with the popular ethnic words used in shops, restaurants, etc.
I suspect that if I had not ended up in IT I would have become a linguist or etymologist.
As a further observation. Russia and China might object to "English" on political grounds (and the West would certainly bristle at the complicated Mandarin and be politically opposed to learning Russian).
Esperanto gets rid of politics when trying to come up with standards.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Decades ago when I was in middle school I had to select a second language to study. That time happened to be another one of those periods when many of the loudest voices in the US were telling us we all needed to learn Spanish ASAP to prepare to communicate with all the people living (or yet to be born) in Mexico and South America (Brazil be damned, of course). So I followed that reasoning and suffered through 3 years of Spanish by the time I was done with high school.
Yet even then I had an inclination towards science. Now many years past college, I repeatedly realize that the language I should have taken is indeed German. While I have never met someone at a conference who speaks German but not English, I almost never meet anyone at a conference who speaks any significant degree of Spanish. In my field the top languages after English are almost certainly German, Mandarin, Hindi, Russian, Japanese, French, Italian, and Dutch (in that order). I meet more people speaking Norwegian than I meet speaking Spanish.
Sure, Spanish is useful for many people, but I could have instead studied a language of use to me back then.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Modern American English is a combination of English and many other languages (Spanish, French, German and others)
In many ways, it's a sort of global language that continually evolves.
You didn't need to specify "American" there as that is true for all varieties of mainstream English. Of course, what's even more fun is when you consider that almost half of English words have a French-connection. "French" was originally a pidgin of Germanic languages and Latin. (the Franks being a German tribe settling in an area which had been speaking Latin because of the Roman rule for centuries). German is a mishmash of various regional variants that came to form one language and has borrowed from it's neighbours.
English has also taken on words from India, Turkey, Native Americans, and more. So we speak a put-together language that took it's inspiration from other languages that were put-together from other combinations.
200 years from now I bet Chinese and English will be influencing each other heavily with English words being adopted into Mandarin and Mandarin words being adopted into English. Language is a beautiful messed up thing.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
To native speakers, I mean. I have noticed that (educated) foreigners who learnt English as a second language all too often seem to be able to write better English than native speakers. Learning English natively will give you an edge if you aspire to become a horse racing commentator for the BBC. For writing up research papers (or books) on physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, etc. not so much.
England is conveniently located within 30 day's sailing time from the eastern seaboard of the US, as a result there are regions there called "new england" and other major cities were named after other major areas in Europe... New York City was famously once called new Amsterdam.
So then, it shouldn't be surprising that as you head south, you have a lot of Spanish speakers, the cities often are named "San ____", reflecting their Spanish/Mexican heritage due to Spanish colonization from the south.
So then, it shouldn't be surprising that as you head west, you have a lot of asian speakers, the cities often have a chinatown or japantown, reflecting their asian heritage due to importing asians to build American railroads, and also simply being 30 days sailing time from the western seaboard of the US.
TL;DR if you don't live on the east coast, it is really weird to hear someone being concerned about English being spoken in the US, because it is only 1/3rd of the picture, and you sound very isolated. I am glad you are here on the internet now, maybe you can catch up on being exposed to other cultures now. Good luck.
moox. for a new generation.
For scientific papers? Really? If you want to understand the complete opposite of what they claim, maybe.
it worked for NASA. The moon landing was basically a big, multi-billion dollar middle finger to Russia. All we gotta do to restore the last 40 years of cuts to science & education is convince the ones doing the cutting that they're gonna all end up speaking Mandarin and watch the money flow in.
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I don't care what they speak, as long as the list includes English.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
, if you LIVE in the US, you should use English as your primary language, especially when out and about in public.
Why is that?
I don't respond to AC's.
Who were the Franks? Anyone west of Rome/Italy is a Frank. It is like that famous cartoon of New Yorker's view of America. There is Hudson, New Jersey ... and San Francisco somewhere over there.
It means a link language, language of communications between the unwashed masses, while the high society of priests were using Latin.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
And that is a problem.
Why?
And while explaining this, keep in mind in the vast majority of cases the grandchildren of any non-English-speaking immigrants only speak English fluently.
The unreality of saying it is easier to make people learn a second language that just sticking with English, yeah kind of fucking stupid, which is exactly why Esperanto is exactly where it is. I remeber coming across an old text about battle English, the created language which merged together a series of other languages to make communications on the battlefield possible across a variety of nationalities.
English ain't even English in reality, not a regional tongue but an assemblage of regional tongues, mainly European but as it spreads further gaining other words and continually changing.
For Russians and Chinese it makes sense to create their version of English to make it easier to learn for their citizens but still allow global communications, which of course craps all over the corporate main stream media distortions about the world and who is really causing the trouble and who are really the victims, this made possible by language differences, those people victims of the predatory US, not being able to readily publicly speak to the rest of the world.
Suck it up, English and it's variations are the language that will dominate but cheer up, based upon the English of the past, it will not be the current English but one that is crafted in the future out of for example Russia English and Chinese English just like the English for dummies American English. So they add in the cultural expressions and some of the most used words and if they are accepted they tend to spread globally.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen